Louisiana Board of Ethics is 'in a quagmire' over fee procedure

The state Board of Ethics instructed its staff Friday to file suit to get a judge to help unravel a legal morass over who has the authority to hold hearings that can assess penalties for unpaid campaign finance law violations.

Frank Simoneaux is chairman of the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

The ethics board unanimously voted to file the suit in state district court as soon as possible. No deadline was given.

Board Chairman Frank Simoneaux said because of mixed legal signals from 19th Judicial District Court Judge William Morvant of Baton Rouge and a panel of administrative law judges, known as the Ethics Adjudicatory Board, the ethics panel is "in a quagmire" over how it can operate.

Morvant ruled last year that the ethics board, which oversees campaign finance law cases, is not the proper forum to hold hearings on late reporting filings and other campaign finance matters. Those hearings can lead to fines and penalties.

Morvant said the hearings should be held by the Ethics Adjudicatory Board.

The Adjudicatory Board ruled recently that the law does not give it that jurisdiction and declined to hear 15 cases the ethics board brought to it.

"It is very difficult for us to figure out where we should be," Simoneaux said. "I think we need to seek a declaratory judgment (from the 19th Judicial District Court) to free us from the quagmire we are in."

Ethics Administrator Kathleen Allen said the stalemate could affect about 300 cases involving violations and late fees that are making their way through the board and court processes.

"We can still assess the late fees," Allen said, "but the question is what if they don't pay. ... Who holds the hearing and how do we ... collect?"

Allen said she does not feel the board is hindered in imposing late fees or granting waivers for violations.

During the almost 4½-hour meeting, the board refused to waive $1,000 in late fees assessed against Caroline Fayard, who unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor last year and has indicated she is running for secretary of state this year.

Ethics board attorney Alesia Ardoin said campaign officials failed to file special 48-hour reports totaling about $20,000. State law requires candidates who receive major donations in the last days of a race to report them within 48 hours.

Ardoin said the reports were due Oct. 26 and Oct. 30 but were seven and three days late, respectively.

Fayard campaign attorney Jenny Jackson said some checks were sent to the law office of Fayard's father, who deposited them but did not immediately tell the campaign for reporting purposes. Jackson said when the treasurer was reconciling the books, it came to her attention and the reports were filed immediately.

The board also refused to waive $3,200 in campaign finance late fees against the Louisiana Democratic Party's political action arm, known as Louisiana Democrats, for not filing "special campaign finance disclosure reports" on time. The reports, according to Ardoin, were due Oct. 22 and Oct. 28, but were not filed until Nov. 2.

Ardoin said the campaign reports showed the state party PAC reported $378,000 on the report due Oct. 22 and $453,246 in contributions on the report due Oct. 28.

State Party Chairman Claude "Buddy" Leach said an ethics board staffer verbally assured party officials in 2001 that the special reports did not have to be filed by the state party PAC. Leach said the last special report was filed in 2000.

In the intervening years, Leach said, the ethics board staff "never once" sent a notice of delinquency or an order to pay, actions that "validated our understanding that we were not required to file these reports."

Leach asked the panel to waive the payments for "good cause."

"We assure you that in the future we will file these special reports as you have now requested us to do," Leach said.

The board also:

Refused to waive $2,500 in late filing fees for Allen "Al" Leone of Jefferson Parish, who has run unsuccessfully for Jefferson Parish president in 2007, state Senate in 2008 and Jefferson assessor earlier this year.

Declined to reduce the already-lowered $300 in late fees assessed on Mary Chehardy, a Metairie widow and unsuccessful candidate for Jefferson Parish assessor this year. The board had assessed a late fee of $1,000 for filing a campaign finance report 10 days late, but it suspended $700 of it. Chehardy said in a letter to the board that because she is on a fixed income, if she has to pay the $300 she will "have to do without some medicine and groceries." The board instructed its staff to work out a payment schedule so Chehardy can pay $25 a month.